The college is hosting a training workshop Oct. 24 for members or prospective members of health service agency boards of directors.

The workshop will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Seminole Campus, 9200 113th St. N. Registration of $125 includes lunch and continental breakfast.

SPC’s Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions is partnering with the Citizen Advocacy Center of Washington, D.C., and the Florida Department of Health’s Medical Quality Assurance Division to present the workshop for members of health professional licensing boards and for individuals who may be interested in seeking appointment to one of these boards. Facility regulators and the directors and staff of healthcare facilities are also encouraged to attend to learn more about how the two regulatory systems can work together to advance patient safety.

The workshop comes as frightening headlines draw attention to outbreaks of deadly disease traced to viruses contracted in hospitals and to an epidemic of prescription medication abuse, sometimes resulting in death. Hospital-based infections are often attributed to a widespread failure to follow hygiene protocols. Abuse of controlled substances is made possible when licensed health care professionals prescribe improperly or lend their credentials to “pill mills.”

Preventing or fixing problems like these is the job of regulators, some of whom are responsible for ensuring the safety of healthcare delivery systems and others for enforcing standards of practice for the individual professionals who deliver care.

The training is offered in recognition of the fact that appointees to licensing boards often have little understanding of what is expected of them in their role as board members. Little in the average appointee’s background prepares him or her for such service. This is especially true for public members, who are told to bring a consumer perspective to their board’s deliberations. What exactly does this mean, they ask, and how can we do it effectively? Facility leadership and facility regulators may also be unfamiliar with professional licensing and how it impacts their day-to-day operations.

The training will cover:

The basics of boardsmanship – how boards work, their structure and powers, roles and responsibilities of public members

How board actions affect the quality, safety, cost and availability of services

Their relationship to other agencies: How do boards that regulate persons interact with agencies that regulate health delivery facilities?

Rulemaking

Relations with state Legislatures

Outreach to the public

And the responsibilities and pitfalls of discipline

To register, go to spcollege.edu/solutions and click on Upcoming Programs for a link to the Citizen Advocacy Center, or phone 727-394-6933.

Along with food, water and shelter, energy is among the most essential elements of human life in the modern world. It lights and heats homes, powers transportation, and is essential to commerce. Yet in the post-recession, post-tsunami world of 2012, energy faces a very uncertain future.

A distinguished group of experts will explore that future in a series of free public forums at St. Petersburg College. The first forum in the series, focusing on the future of nuclear energy, will be held from 6-8 p.m. Jan. 11 in the Digitorium of the SPC Seminole Campus, 9200 113th Street North. Titled Our Energy Future: Are Nukes Still Viable, and Do Lawmakers Get It on Energy?, the forum is presented by SPC’s Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions and co-sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times and WUSF Public Media.

Is there a future for nuclear energy? Nukes have been the focus of heated debate over safety, cost, waste and siting concerns since their inception. That debate got much hotter after the March tsunami in Japan caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant. Since then, Germany, Japan, Switzerland and Italy have announced plans to phase out nuclear plants.

Not in Florida. The state’s two largest utilities are seeking permits to add nuclear capacity even as the debate rages over cost and need factors and the perennial concern for safety and waste. Consumer advocates take issue with a state law that allows utilities to charge customers in advance for plants that are years down the road. They also question the need for new plants with per capita energy use declining and argue there are less expensive and less risky ways to meet energy demand. The industry defends its safety record, efficiency factor, and non-polluting benefits.

Solutions to the national debt crisis are not terribly difficult – if politics can be removed from the equation.

That is the theme of a free public forum to be presented Dec. 7 by the Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions at the college. Titled “Solving the National Debt Crisis: It’s Not Rocket Science,” the forum will be from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Conference Center at the Seminole Campus. The event is co-sponsored by WUSF Public Media, the St. Petersburg Times and BrightHouse Networks.

The solutions will be offered by the Concord Coalition, a non-partisan, grassroots organization based in Washington, D.C. Its documentary film, “I.O.U.S.A. Solutions,” takes the complexity out of the national debt crisis. The film presents the shocking scale of the national debt in clear, easily-understood terms and then offers in clear, concise form a four-step plan for gradually getting the country out of the crisis.

Presenting the film and update of the fiscal crisis will be Joshua Gordon, Policy Director of the Concord Coalition. Dr. Gordon, who grew up in Seminole and graduated from St. Petersburg High School, directs the Coalition’s research on the federal budget, health care policy and tax policy. He is a frequently-quoted expert in national press coverage of fiscal issues.

This forum will be staged just two weeks after the deadline for Congress’ “Super Committee” to have released its recommendations on a $1.5 trillion deficit-reduction package. Failure to reach agreement on such a package will trigger $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts. He will provide the latest information on the status of the committee and assess impacts of its recommendations.

The Concord Coalition is dedicated to educating the public about the causes and consequences of federal budget deficits, the long-term challenges facing America’s unsustainable entitlement programs, and strategies to build a sound foundation for economic growth. It was founded in the early 1990s out of the conviction that Americans have a moral obligation to leave the country better off for their children and grandchildren.

The Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions is SPC’s new policy center, focusing on academic enrichment, community outreach and public discourse. Resolutely non-partisan, it plans to present a broad program of forums and workshops on issues of critical concern to Tampa Bay-area residents.